You Couldnt Stand This, so iHad To
by BoxOfTrinkets
Summary: "I love you." he had whispered desperately, clutching her thin, white hand to his face. She hadn't answered him, only continued to stare blankly at him.


He runs his hands through his hair in frustration. He stares at his reflection in disgust. Your pathetic, he scowls at the teenager in the mirror with the dark circles under his eyes and the anger gleaming in his eyes. No tears yet. At least. He tears off his jacket and almost rips his tie as he wrenches it from around his neck. He lets out a growl of anger and grips the sides of his face and slides down the wall so he sits with his back against the door. He fights to hold in the tears as he listens to his best friend sobbing brokenly through the door. He cant breathe anymore. His head swims and his vision blurs and the blood is pumping loud in his ears and drowns out the sounds of Carly crying.

He needs to leave this bathroom. This apartment. This building. Everything about this building reeks of her. This bathroom, with its new mirror, the last one having been shattered by a tiny girl with tiny hands. The tears finally fall when he remembers yanking open the door to find her crying on the floor, surrounded by broken glass and clutching a bleeding hand to her bony chest. A chill runs through his as he remembers that time, when she began to look more and more broken. Thinner and thinner. Her arms became more and more tattered and scarred and her face became more and more gaunt and she died slowly more and more. Day by day.

He slams his fist against the wall and Carly's crying becomes more hysterical. She begins to cry out her name and his head begins to throb. He rocks slowly and tries to control the anger that is building up in his chest and he tried his hardest to make sure it isn't aimed at her. He's not mad at Carly. Even though she knew she wasn't eating and she knew about the marks on her arm and she knew that she spent all her time in that basement at that house doing those things. She saw the holes in the crooks of her elbows and she knew that she never left the house before smoking her way through a joint and she knew that she never did an iCarly without taking one of the little pills she kept in her pocket. He's not mad at Carly.

A shudder tears through him and a sob tears through his throat as he remember the time he found her on his fire escape, with unfocused eyes, the inability to speak and fresh bruises on her arms from where she pushed needles relentlessly into her collapsed veins. He had spent hours pleading with her. To stop. To find help. To let him help. He reached out and touched her face and she didn't so much as blink. He sat in front of her and cried as he pleaded and she hadn't responded.

"I love you." he had whispered desperately, clutching her thin, white hand to his face. She hadn't answered him, only continued to stare blankly at him.

He stands up furiously and storms form the bathroom, startling Carly. She's still wearing her black dress and heels and Spencer sits on the couch with his arms around her, still in his black suit. The sight of formally dressed siblings with matching tear streaked faces is too much for him and he leaves, slamming the door behind him and blindly walking, not noticing where he walks until he ends up on his fire escape. He falls into a defeated heap and hides his face in his hands, suddenly suffocated by the barrage of memories that attack him from this very fire escape. His first kiss, her mouth, her scent. Her.

He had found her again only once more on his fire escape, completely sober for the first time in weeks. He had lifted her frail body from its place on the window sill and placed her on his bed while he stared up at her from the floor. Once again her had pleaded with her. Begged her. To stop her self destructive behavior and to stop. For him, for Carly, for Spencer, for herself. She still hadn't said anything, only continued to stare at him with her unfocused eyes and blank expression.

"I love you." he had whispered again.

Again. No answer.

He runs his hands through his hair again angrily wipes the tears from his face. She had been rushed to the hospital the next week when she collapsed during an iCarly segment. He remembers dropping the camera and rushing to her and Carly screaming and Spencer jumping out of his ridiculous baby costume and scooping her up and rushing her out of the apartment. He remembers making Carly calm down enough to get her downstairs to his car and following Spencer's car all the way to the hospital. He remembers how thin and pale she looked laying on the stretcher as she disappeared into the emergency room. How small and broken she looked laying in her hospital room with a million tubes and wires leading to numerous machines around her. He remembers how hard it was to listen to Carly cry as they stood next to her bed.

He remembers the awful sound of her heart monitor when it stopped beeping.

He doesn't remember anything after that. He doesn't remember the week that followed. He doesn't remember spending every day after that with Carly, listening to her desperate sobbing. He doesn't remember holding her twin sister as she cried, sounding exactly like Carly. He doesn't remember his mothers nervous talks about coping or handling this maturely. He only remembers returning from her funeral and locking himself in Carly's bathroom. Carly.

Feeling a sudden pang of guilt he remembers his best friend crying heartbrokenly in the arms of her brother that he left across the hall. With tremendous effort he pulls himself from his wreckage of memories and leaves the fire escape and returns to Carly's apartment. She looks up when he walks back in and they stare at each other for a minute before he sits and they embrace each other.

"I loved her Freddie." Carly murmurs.

He swallows heavily before answering.

"So did I Carly."


End file.
